For centuries, there has been a progression away from information being handed down from centralized authorities, and towards a more democratic production and transfer of knowledge and art. Since the invention of the printing press catalyzed this process in the late fifteenth century, the world has continued to take small steps in this direction, leading to increased literacy, the development of public education and public libraries, and other developments that have fostered intellectuality in common people. At the risk of overstatement, I will submit that, with the advent of the internet, society has perhaps taken its largest leap since the invention of the printing press in its journey towards the complete democratization of knowledge and art. At the touch of our fingers, common citizens around the world now have access to the great art, science, political thoughts, and philosophies of the past and present. Just as the invention of the printing press is credited as a point of origin for almost every important historical event in the second half of the second millennium A.D., it is conceivable that this next step in the accessibility of knowledge and art could have profound implications for our culture. With that in mind, I will explore the following question for my final project: in what specific ways has the internet propelled the democratization of knowledge and art, and, given current trends, what changes could we expect to see in our future society as a result? The Internet allows for a number of modes of expression of knowledge that embrace democratic, community-driven agreement as a the most valid way of arriving at the “truth.” This is obviously in stark contrast to the attitude of, say, the Middle Ages, in which the powerful Catholic Church censured knowledge, allowing only books which did not contradict their dogma to be published. However, just because by the later part of the millenium we were no longer brain-slaves to the church doesn’t mean that knowledge was free. It was, perhaps by some degree of necessity, still hoarded by the elite who had access to the resources needed to pay for higher education and expensive encyclopedias, for example, and who had been socialized in a sub-culture in which education was encouraged. In short, although its status was vastly superior to that of the Middle Ages, knowledge was still institutionalized and not democratized. Knowledge still existed in the form of what postmodern theorists would call metanarratives: the overarching conceptions of art, science, history, and spirituality that were created and propogated by social institutions. A metanarrative is the all-encompassing big-picture story that emerges from a bunch of little stories put together, like the Bible, or a simplisticly biased account of American history. Postmodernists are skeptical of this, because they are skeptical of the idea of “one truth”, and of the corruption of the institutions that have typically produced these metanarratives. In true postmodern fashion, modern digital culture has thrown off the shackles of metanarratives formerly forced upon us by institutions; sites like Wikipedia represent a new democratic way of arriving at our understanding of history, science, and religion that is in stark contrast to the elite institution-driven distribution of knowledge which characterized past centuries. Perhaps even more excitingly, sites like Wikileaks have sent a message to these institutions that the people have the power now, and that the leaders of these institutions will no longer get away with any attempts to modify the truth for their own purposes. Developments like this represent a shift away from the passive distrust of metanarratives and social institutions that characterized earlier postmodernism, and towards an active dissolution of these things. We, as citizens of the world, are beginning to feel a powerful sense of entitlement to any and all knowledge. With changing attitudes towards knowledge, one might expect to see a reevaluation of older institutional modes of knowledge transfer. For instance, people may begin to ask, if they have not already, exactly what purpose higher education is serving in our society. It seems plausible that people in the (perhaps near) future will find themselves unable to justify spending astronomical amounts of money on a college education only to receive the same information that could be obtained by a diligent and motivated browser of the internet. At the very least, the availability of the same knowledge on the internet for free would expose the institution of higher education as a financially exclusionary institution, the only benefit of which is to receive a piece of paper signifying its completion. If society were to decide that this was not a good enough reason to continue the tradition of higher education, what would become of the functional specialization of labor that is ensured by our higher education system? Is it possible that the availability of knowledge is pushing us towards a world in which we would all be somewhat knowledgable on a great number of topics, but not experts on any one thing? These ideas, while admittedly somewhat speculative, point to the fact that this new community-oriented, non-commoditized conception of knowledge simply does not mesh with the tenants of capitalism; if these ideas were to come to fruition it would likely be alongside a major shift in our economic system. This shift in the economic system would reflect the value we place on the open transfer of knowledge, and move away from having to buy that knowledge from the elite people who possess it. It is appropriate that one of the first places we have seen ideas like this become openly supported is in the field of computer programming. “Open source” programming is presented by its advocates as an alternative to the software of companies like Microsoft and Macintosh who capitalize on their operating systems and refuse to make public the source codes for these systems. The open source movement in computer programming functions as an excellent microcosm for analyzing the attributes and the potential problems of the democratization of knowledge and art and therefore warrants its explanation. Proponents of open source software stand behind the idea that, by allowing other people access to the source code of open source operating systems like Linux, those operating systems will just become better and better with time, as more people tinker with them and perfect any flaws (a very similar idea, as a side note, to that of Wikipedia’s approach to knowledge). They maintain that this type of software does not need to be capitalized on; the cost exists only in the original creation of the software and, after that point, companies like Microsoft are simply raking in pure, undeserved profit. However, one problem with these open source programs is they don’t have the, currently somewhat necessary, customer support that Mac and Windows do. There are so many variations of the software out there that it is difficult for people to find the best ones, and make sure that they are getting the software from reliable sources. This leads me to a more general point about a potential problem concerning the democratization of knowledge: In the absence of receiving information/software/art etc. from experts, would the quality of these things suffer? For example, to return to the idea that the availability of knowledge on the internet could potentially undermine the validity of higher education, would a resulting shift away from capitalist ideals of functional specialization, and thus away from expertise in general, also detract from the quality of the information available to us? These questions seem so hypothetical at this point that perhaps it is better to talk about a more concrete, smaller-scale example: the current industries of art and entertainment, from which we can perhaps draw more broad conclusions. In my post from earlier in the semester titled “Radiohead’s response to a changing digital landscape,” I gave some statistics about the failing music industry: album sales have been cut in half in the past decade, and unauthorized downloads account for 90% of the market. More and more artists are choosing to bypass the frustrations of dealing with a record company because it is serving no purpose to have their albums released in this way. It can be assumed that the idea of free file-sharing websites will continue to gain supporters, and album sales will continue to decline. Taking this idea to its not-too-far-fetched logical extreme, the record industry will go under, and then we will have an interesting situation; this form of art will have become decentralized, no longer handed down to us by industry buffs with song-writing formulas and ideas about how to sell an artist’s image. Instead, what we deem “good music” will spread in a meme fashion, like Youtube videos; we will hear about new artists because their music is so good that they deserved to be heard about, and has thus spread rapidly through word of mouth. But will these artists be able to stay afloat in the absence of the financial stability of album sales? They may be able to, but perhaps only because the phenomenon of live music makes the music industry an exception to the rule. The same thing however, is happening with film and television. Good quality cuts of new release movies, still in theaters, can be found all over the Internet from file sharing websites. Perhaps this has not yet fully caught up with the film industry like it has for the music industry, in part due to the romanticization of the generation-old American pastime of “going to the movies.” But it seems unlikely that film fans will continue to romanticize this forever; as home viewing technology gets better and better, and new films and television shows become more and more accessible for free, it is not a stretch to suggest that these industries could go under, too. If all these industries were to go under, would we still have works of fiction (television and movies) and music that were the same caliber of production and expertise as we have today? If it were not particularly lucrative to write a song or a movie, would anyone still choose to do it except as a passing hobby, producing works that paled in comparison to that of someone whose livelihood depended on it? The same can be asked of the democratization of knowledge. If society continues to demand things for free, whether it be knowledge, art, software, if we de-commoditize these things, will they continue to be produced at the same rate and quality as they are today? Is capitalism a necessary motivator for developing expertise, and expertise a neccesarry part of keeping an advanced society running? If this is true, will this reason be enough to keep the current systems in place? Or will society, knowlingly or not, continue the journey, now centuries old, of demanding access to knowledge above all else.
The Internet allows for a number of modes of expression of knowledge that embrace democratic, community-driven agreement as a the most valid way of arriving at the “truth.” This is obviously in stark contrast to the attitude of, say, the Middle Ages, in which the powerful Catholic Church censured knowledge, allowing only books which did not contradict their dogma to be published. However, just because by the later part of the millenium we were no longer brain-slaves to the church doesn’t mean that knowledge was free. It was, perhaps by some degree of necessity, still hoarded by the elite who had access to the resources needed to pay for higher education and expensive encyclopedias, for example, and who had been socialized in a sub-culture in which education was encouraged. In short, although its status was vastly superior to that of the Middle Ages, knowledge was still institutionalized and not democratized. Knowledge still existed in the form of what postmodern theorists would call metanarratives: the overarching conceptions of art, science, history, and spirituality that were created and propogated by social institutions. A metanarrative is the all-encompassing big-picture story that emerges from a bunch of little stories put together, like the Bible, or a simplisticly biased account of American history. Postmodernists are skeptical of this, because they are skeptical of the idea of “one truth”, and of the corruption of the institutions that have typically produced these metanarratives.
In true postmodern fashion, modern digital culture has thrown off the shackles of metanarratives formerly forced upon us by institutions; sites like Wikipedia represent a new democratic way of arriving at our understanding of history, science, and religion that is in stark contrast to the elite institution-driven distribution of knowledge which characterized past centuries. Perhaps even more excitingly, sites like Wikileaks have sent a message to these institutions that the people have the power now, and that the leaders of these institutions will no longer get away with any attempts to modify the truth for their own purposes. Developments like this represent a shift away from the passive distrust of metanarratives and social institutions that characterized earlier postmodernism, and towards an active dissolution of these things. We, as citizens of the world, are beginning to feel a powerful sense of entitlement to any and all knowledge.
With changing attitudes towards knowledge, one might expect to see a reevaluation of older institutional modes of knowledge transfer. For instance, people may begin to ask, if they have not already, exactly what purpose higher education is serving in our society. It seems plausible that people in the (perhaps near) future will find themselves unable to justify spending astronomical amounts of money on a college education only to receive the same information that could be obtained by a diligent and motivated browser of the internet. At the very least, the availability of the same knowledge on the internet for free would expose the institution of higher education as a financially exclusionary institution, the only benefit of which is to receive a piece of paper signifying its completion. If society were to decide that this was not a good enough reason to continue the tradition of higher education, what would become of the functional specialization of labor that is ensured by our higher education system? Is it possible that the availability of knowledge is pushing us towards a world in which we would all be somewhat knowledgable on a great number of topics, but not experts on any one thing? These ideas, while admittedly somewhat speculative, point to the fact that this new community-oriented, non-commoditized conception of knowledge simply does not mesh with the tenants of capitalism; if these ideas were to come to fruition it would likely be alongside a major shift in our economic system.
This shift in the economic system would reflect the value we place on the open transfer of knowledge, and move away from having to buy that knowledge from the elite people who possess it. It is appropriate that one of the first places we have seen ideas like this become openly supported is in the field of computer programming. “Open source” programming is presented by its advocates as an alternative to the software of companies like Microsoft and Macintosh who capitalize on their operating systems and refuse to make public the source codes for these systems. The open source movement in computer programming functions as an excellent microcosm for analyzing the attributes and the potential problems of the democratization of knowledge and art and therefore warrants its explanation. Proponents of open source software stand behind the idea that, by allowing other people access to the source code of open source operating systems like Linux, those operating systems will just become better and better with time, as more people tinker with them and perfect any flaws (a very similar idea, as a side note, to that of Wikipedia’s approach to knowledge). They maintain that this type of software does not need to be capitalized on; the cost exists only in the original creation of the software and, after that point, companies like Microsoft are simply raking in pure, undeserved profit. However, one problem with these open source programs is they don’t have the, currently somewhat necessary, customer support that Mac and Windows do. There are so many variations of the software out there that it is difficult for people to find the best ones, and make sure that they are getting the software from reliable sources.
This leads me to a more general point about a potential problem concerning the democratization of knowledge: In the absence of receiving information/software/art etc. from experts, would the quality of these things suffer? For example, to return to the idea that the availability of knowledge on the internet could potentially undermine the validity of higher education, would a resulting shift away from capitalist ideals of functional specialization, and thus away from expertise in general, also detract from the quality of the information available to us? These questions seem so hypothetical at this point that perhaps it is better to talk about a more concrete, smaller-scale example: the current industries of art and entertainment, from which we can perhaps draw more broad conclusions.
In my post from earlier in the semester titled “Radiohead’s response to a changing digital landscape,” I gave some statistics about the failing music industry: album sales have been cut in half in the past decade, and unauthorized downloads account for 90% of the market. More and more artists are choosing to bypass the frustrations of dealing with a record company because it is serving no purpose to have their albums released in this way. It can be assumed that the idea of free file-sharing websites will continue to gain supporters, and album sales will continue to decline. Taking this idea to its not-too-far-fetched logical extreme, the record industry will go under, and then we will have an interesting situation; this form of art will have become decentralized, no longer handed down to us by industry buffs with song-writing formulas and ideas about how to sell an artist’s image. Instead, what we deem “good music” will spread in a meme fashion, like Youtube videos; we will hear about new artists because their music is so good that they deserved to be heard about, and has thus spread rapidly through word of mouth. But will these artists be able to stay afloat in the absence of the financial stability of album sales? They may be able to, but perhaps only because the phenomenon of live music makes the music industry an exception to the rule.
The same thing however, is happening with film and television. Good quality cuts of new release movies, still in theaters, can be found all over the Internet from file sharing websites. Perhaps this has not yet fully caught up with the film industry like it has for the music industry, in part due to the romanticization of the generation-old American pastime of “going to the movies.” But it seems unlikely that film fans will continue to romanticize this forever; as home viewing technology gets better and better, and new films and television shows become more and more accessible for free, it is not a stretch to suggest that these industries could go under, too. If all these industries were to go under, would we still have works of fiction (television and movies) and music that were the same caliber of production and expertise as we have today? If it were not particularly lucrative to write a song or a movie, would anyone still choose to do it except as a passing hobby, producing works that paled in comparison to that of someone whose livelihood depended on it?
The same can be asked of the democratization of knowledge. If society continues to demand things for free, whether it be knowledge, art, software, if we de-commoditize these things, will they continue to be produced at the same rate and quality as they are today? Is capitalism a necessary motivator for developing expertise, and expertise a neccesarry part of keeping an advanced society running? If this is true, will this reason be enough to keep the current systems in place? Or will society, knowlingly or not, continue the journey, now centuries old, of demanding access to knowledge above all else.